Are Children Winning the Chore Wars?
Modern parents struggle with how much responsibility to give to children and when. Typical American practice calls for parents to keep children available so they may have the time for enriching, resume enhancing activities or for just being kids. Yet even once we found our houses dominated by spoiled kids from 20-somethings down to toddlers, we still use a ‘less and later’ responsibility pattern.
Modern parenting stories are loaded with unintentionally humorous “paradoxically” comments. From a New Yorker review of a slew of books about how to avoid raising spoiled kids, “Paradoxically, [an author] maintains, by working so hard to help our kids we end up holding them back.” That hard work by Group A on behalf of Group B results in less work from Group B? This is not a paradox. It is cold reality.
I’m tempted to be smug on these chore wars. My kids are expected to do chores, but I usually have to be “instructionally repetitive.” (That is my husband’s polite phrase for “nagging.”) The New Yorker review suggests — and I think she is on to something — that we get “kiddie whipped.” Describing her own experience with chore assignment:
[M]y husband and I gave [our children] a new job: unloading the grocery bags from the car. One evening when I came home from the store, it was raining. Carrying two or three bags, the youngest, Aaron, who is thirteen, tried to jump over a puddle. There was a loud crash. After I’d retrieved what food could be salvaged from a Molotov cocktail of broken glass and mango juice, I decided that Aaron needed another, more vigorous lesson in responsibility. Now, in addition to unloading groceries, he would also have the task of taking out the garbage. On one of his first forays, he neglected to close the lid on the pail tightly enough, and it attracted a bear. The next morning, as I was gathering up the used tissues, ant-filled raisin boxes, and slimy Saran Wrap scattered across the yard, I decided that I didn’t have time to let my kids help out around the house. (My husband informed me that I’d just been “kiddie-whipped.”
That I would have made my children clean up the grocery and garbage messes doesn’t change the fact that it would have been easier to do the jobs myself. That thought undermines my resolve to have my children help around the house. Even though I’m trying to raise responsible kids, they still see that I don’t always expect them to do chores, and so they don’t.
Any parents out there who avoided becoming “kiddie-whipped?” I’d love some advice.
The behavior the author describes is nearly the same as giving in to a toddler’s tantrum at the grocery store.
By doing it herself, kid learns that making a mess gets him out of chores, AND mom learns that, if she does it herself, it’s faster, easier, and quicker.
(Un)Luckily for me, my mom never gave herself the chance to learn this lesson; therefore, neither did I.
While he never said it in so many words, my father’s attitude was, “If I have to feed you, I might as well get some work out of you.”
Larry J, that’s the attitude my Dad took, and I carried the same attitude into raising my kids.
I can’t believe that woman described making her 13 YO take out the garbage. He should have been doing it since he was 8 or 9. Should be an expert by the time he’s 13.
It sounds like he’s using the old “if I keep screwing up then she’ll eventually stop telling me to do stuff” tactic. It can be very effective against a weak willed opponent. My father’s response was to make my clean up the mess. I quickly learned that doing things right the first time was a lot less work. That relevation was the inspiration for Larry’s Second Law: Laziness is the foundation of efficency.
I noted that her kids were older as well. My 8 year old made that garbage mistake last year. rlaWTX has a point, giving in is quicker, easier, more seductive but only leads to the Dark Side, a harried mom with lazy kids, soon to be lazy adults.
Something I forgot to mention in the post, this quicker, easier, more seductive parenting is all the more seductive if one can afford household help. Not only is it easier to do the job yourself because somebody else still does it, but also housekeepers want to get the job done quickly and efficiently. Just like the mom, the housekeeper realizes it is easier to do the job herself, and she doesn’t have the same motivation as the parents to make sure the kids do their chores.
Yes, teaching requires an investment of time. But investments often produce growing payoffs. Today grand daughter knocked over some dirt for plants. She expected to get in a lot of trouble, but I just taught her how to clean it up. She did as much of the clean up as she could and I finished what she did not do well. She learned how to clean up dirt, she found she could avoid punishment by doing what she could to repair the damage, and I practiced teaching and patience skills. Of course you do not have time to constantly clean up after your children, that’s why we have to teach them. Teaching our children is the most important thing we can do.
There is no school for learning life skills except for dealing with life’s lessons as they come. Postponing lessons for a later time, that never comes, is neglectful of your children’s education. And to really scare you, I would rather do other things than have my grandchildren at my house every day while my daughter works, but then I realized it gives me the chance to teach them the things I should have taught my children.
Well, with an 8, 6, and two 4 year olds my teaching and patience skills should be in top form. Actually, they are pretty good in a sprint, but my endurance stinks. A model parent on Friday afternoon, I can be a real ogre mommy by Sunday at dinner.
“And to really scare you, I would rather do other things than have my grandchildren at my house every day while my daughter works, but then I realized it gives me the chance to teach them the things I should have taught my children.”
This doesn’t scare me at all. As a grandmother, you can sweep in and be a hero to your kid by taking the children for a weekend, you aren’t responsible for the children’s day to day discipline so you can spoil them a bit and give them a holiday from the rules and teach them cool stuff like gardening, then you can return them to their parents and get some peace and sleep. This sounds like my dream job. I can’t wait to be a grandmother!
I am wondering if the child bungling the chore did, indeed, win a chore war. A story may be instructive here.
When my grandfather was a young man in the early 1900s he worked for the railroad. The nature of his work required that his railroad crew be fed lunch each day. The job of cook rotated among the crew-mates on a daily basis. My grandfather did not want to cook for his crew. Thus, on the first day he was assigned to cook for the crew, he added a cup of salt to the stew he was preparing for the crew instead of the tablespoon of salt the recipe required. He was never asked to cook for the crew again.
What is the formula for being a good parent? It would be nice if there was one, but there isn’t. Goodness, decency, self discipline, attitude; none of these can be quantified. There is no equation, there is only common sense and muddling through.
If you want your kid (or husband) to do chores the key is to not be too critical and live with the fact that it wont be done to your standards. Our sons age 12 and almost 14, do their own laundry and take care of lawn, dishes and Garbbage.
Agreed, especially with husbands. Everyone knows that kids will have a learning curve even if we have varying degrees of patience for it. It tempers our criticism for kids but not for husbands who we expect to know better. The more critical the wives get, the less the husbands do. I have told many a new mom that if your husband is bathing the baby, unless he is about to drown the baby or flood the bathroom, shut up. Leave. Don’t watch. The daddy won’t, and shouldn’t, do things the same way the mommy would.
I did this and now have few, if any, complaints about my husband helping around the house. (He travels often, so he isn’t always there to help. And he takes 3x as many dishes to cook dinner as I do. But then, he washes up so I can’t really complain about that.)
More women need to realize this:
1. Just because your husband does something different from the way you do it, it doesn’t automatically mean he’s wrong and you’re right. His way might actually be better.
2. Just because you might be obscessive about something doesn’t mean that everyone should be.
3. Just because you see something that needs to be done, don’t automatically think he sees it, too. He might actually have other things on his mind and he can’t read yours.
4. Accept for the moment that he might have other priorities than you. Just because something needs to be done, it doesn’t mean he has to drop everything to cater to your priorities. What he’s doing might actually be more important at that moment.
The way my parents was through bribery. I didn’t get an allowance. Instead, a list of chores was posted on the refridgerator every week with two boxes that could be checked off, one for my sister and one for me. On Monday, my mother would go through the list and hand out payment based on who did what chore.
If you didn’t do chores, you didn’t get paid; and that means that when your friends wanted to go to the movies you couldn’t afford to go. A lovely little lesson in how the real world works, and I learned it when I was 8. Thank you, Mom!
The other form of payment I received was when report cards were brought home. A’s and B’s were rewarded.
Oh, that’s an idea, though it isn’t really bribery. Bribery is when you give a kid something they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, like a toy or ice cream. The allowance is not given for doing chores, but, you don’t get your allowance until your work is done. It’s like a company withholding paychecks until the employee turns in required reports.
I like it.
Yeah, I was trying to be snarky.
Looking back on this, the other aspect I liked about the system was the competition it encouraged between me and my sister. Imagine waking up on Saturday morning to discover that your sister was planning on going to a sleep over the next weekend and finding out that she had already completed most of the chores on the list!
This is my approach with our 10 and 7 year old. I have a list of quick, easy chores they can handle without my supervision (clear the table, etc) and each tick mark is worth a quarter. Also a blank “misc” chore for the odd stuff.
Basically, their MO is to ignore it unless they want something, and then get real industrious for a few days, pool their money, and buy the toy/video game to share. B/c the 10 year old now has two higher paying chores (car wash and mow lawn), they are pretty satisfied overall with this, and understand they are expected to buy their own toys (except bdays and xmas of course).
And me, I’m happy to let them ignore the chore list if they want, so I don’t have to nag them. If I really do need help and then I order them to do the needed chore(usually taking out the trash LOL)
Good article, it is true. I think we don’t push kids. We focus on easy, convenient, and don’t want to hurt them. My 3.5 yr old loves to help with jobs. I try giving her small things and she is getting good at it. I also get a lot of judgement for putting an infant in her own room by 6 weeks. My child is a terribly noisy sleeper and I don’t think it’s doing anyone any good to inadvertly wake her up to give her more food. I think she is fussing for old and really she is fussing in her sleep, but at 2 am it all sounds the same. I need to go back to work so, we need to work it out. I don’t think it is mean and don’t need people to judge my love for my child based on that, but alas they do!
You’ve read my baby care post, right?
Oh, and isn’t that a parents main job to raise functional productive members of society?
The best parenting advice I ever got: always look to what your child will be like at 35, not what they will be like tomorrow.
Oops, I think it may be illegal to withhold a paycheck until reports are turned in (this came up once at a place where I worked) unless the specific reporting is specifically mentioned as a job duty.
Something that absolutely torpedoed my efforts to teach my kids to clean up after themselves was an attitude that surfaced in my kids’ grade school cafeteria–my son spilled milk and proceeded to try to clean up (as he’d been taught at the nursery school I sent him to as well as at home). He was stopped by the adult monitor, who told him that was someone else’s job (union rules?). That home rules don’t apply out in the “real” world was the resulting conclusion of my kids from this and other clashes between what I tried to teach and what they experienced at school.
Re: paycheck, yes, for a duty. I was thinking of law firms that sometimes hold a check until the attorney turns in their time.
Re: the undermining. Oh my, this is a problem. You might teach your kids to do for themselves, but others in authority, teachers, grandmothers, etc. tell them they can’t do it themselves. Someone told my 4 year olds that they needed assistance going potty because they aren’t perfectly neat about it. Now my long trained girls often have an accident while yelling at me to come help them on the potty. I’ve had the same problem with clearing the table too. Certain nameless members of my family don’t want the children to drop the dishes.